Stop That Carrion

We did it. At long last we finished a campaign.

After almost two years the finale of Carrion Crown was a bit of an anti-climax as instead of the party fighting the big villain in a dramatic set piece battle atop his evil tower, my necromancer magic jarred him from a distance and had him fling himself over the edge.

Still, at least we got cake.

Pictured is our special celebratory Carrion Cake -- dark chocolate and strawberry with an icing sugar crowned skull motif -- and the victorious sort-of-heroes. From left to right: Tarion, the half-elf ranger/thief; Sir Erodel, the paladin/sorcerer/dragon; Norman, Nicodemus' butler and musketeer; Erodel's cleric henchman, not given a name because of church bureaucracy; Nicodemus Eldritch, monster hunter and necromancer; Veniticus, beefy cleric of Abadar; and 12939, Nicodemus' alchemical golem.

It would be sensible -- after staggering our way to the end of a long campaign -- to have a bit of a breather and play some shorter games, to cleanse the palate as it were.

It would appear that we're not sensible.

The Staggering Insanity of Fourteenth-Level Pathfinder

Round one. The flying red tentacled thing, the flying white dragon, and the giant berserker are the player-characters. The group hanging around in the doorway at the left hand side of the picture are their henchmen and followers. Everything else is a monster to be bashed.

The end of round one:

That's about six seconds of in-game time.

Full Of Beans

Just over a month ago The Guardian published a list of Brighton's top budget restaurants; I would second the recommendations for Iydea, Pompoko, and Pizzaface but I've not been to the rest -- or I have been but so long ago my experience is probably not relevant -- so I can't offer any insight there. Aside from La Choza. We're not very good at Mexican food here in Britain, no doubt due to the lack of a significant immigrant population, so that's something I've missed since moving back here. La Choza is quite good -- and not only by low British standards -- but it is a bit Guardiany, if you know what I mean.

About five minutes away, in a part of town that's a little rougher around the edges and not at all the sort of place that Guardian writers go, is Los Taquitos. The décor isn't anywhere near as precise and considered as that as La Choza's and the place does feel a little bit like a late-night burger or kebab shop -- a number of which can be found nearby -- but if you want a good burrito at a good price, Los Taquitos is the place to go.

I'm by no means an expert, but to me Italian food is better the more basic and rustic it is -- the very idea of fancy Italian food baffles me a little -- and I suspect that this has more than a little to do with a chance encounter I had with a young Italian couple in Paris many years ago, who were proponents of huge pans of cheap and cheerful home-made sauce sloshed all over big plates of pasta. I feel much the same way about Mexican food, which may well be unfair to the cuisine of Mexico, but seems right to me -- again, I'm no expert -- and that's the kind of approach you get at Los Taquitos. I've only had the vegetarian options but they've been excellent in both flavour and value; I tend to go for the vegetarian chilli burrito, which is huge, about £4.50, and is the tastiest I've had in this country.

This isn't a restaurant review -- not being able to try two-thirds of the menu means I'm not qualified for that -- but more of a recommendation. It's in a bit of an odd part of Brighton but if you like Mexican food, then you must make the effort to visit Los Taquitos, because it's ace.

On the Edge

I haven't read Edge in ages. It always took itself a bit too seriously for my liking, the video game equivalent of the pretentious hi-fi magazine, and then they gave Halo 2 ten out of ten and that was about it for me.

As such I missed out on their Minecraft cover in 2011, but as it's the magazine's twentieth anniversary this year they've been reprinting some of their favourites, and as a result I spotted this in the library at work this morning.

Now one might argue that Minecraft and Dungeons and Dragons don't have that much in common but I still like the homage, perhaps because of my long-standing fondness for the 1983 Red Box.

The Finishing Line

I am without doubt laying a curse on it by writing this, but my gaming group is -- after delays and personnel changes -- about three sessions away from finishing the Carrion Crown campaign "adventure path" we started almost two years ago. This may not seem worthy of note, until one realises that my current group seems to have a distinct inability to finish games; in the time I've been part of the group we have started and abandoned at least four large-scale campaigns, with two others that are supposed to be there for us to pick up when we're not playing anything else, but if we're honest those are dead too.

This scrapheap of abandoned adventures isn't a bad thing in itself -- sometimes a game just doesn't work for whatever reason and it could be worse to plough on when no one's enjoying it -- but it has become something of a joke in our group so it will be nice if we can finish Carrion Crown, assuming that I haven't now ruined our chances.

I don't know if campaign abandonment is a common issue; mxyzplk at Geek Related seems to run through three or four campaigns a year but he may be an exception. My original gaming group didn't really go for long-term play but we did sort of finish a sandbox style Shadowrun campaign -- I say "sort of" because we played until our GM +Timothy Coxon went to university but there was no neat, plotted end -- and we played Dungeoneer until we broke the system, but I'm not sure that counts. I did manage to finish Horror On the Orient Express with the group but by the time we got to the end the players I had were not the same players who started it, so I'm not sure that counts either.

I seem to have the most personal success with Call of Cthulhu -- perhaps ironic given its dual reputation as being deadly for player-characters and being rubbish for campaign play -- as one of the few campaigns my current group has completed is Tatters of the King; it wasn't a conventional finish as the players missed half of the campaign, but they did defeat the cultists and save the world so I'm counting it.

So when Carrion Crown ends in a few weeks -- again, assuming I haven't scuppered it -- and our GM Ben takes a break from running games to do stuff like move house and study for a master's degree I should perhaps run something for Call of Cthulhu, because there's a likelihood we might finish it; indeed, I will be getting and running Eternal Lies at some point. First though, I'm going to have a go at running the new version of The Enemy Within for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay; I reckon WFRP is close enough to Call of Cthulhu that we've got a fair chance of getting to the end.

The Fantastic Iron Man

From today's Torygraph:

The US Federal Appeals Court ruled yesterday that the heirs of comic book artist Jack Kirby had no rights to characters such as the Fantastic Four (pictured) and the Hulk and which are now owned by Marvel Entertainment, a Walt Disney subsidiary.

Well, you can forgive them for not knowing who Iron Man is, I suppose. He's quite an obscure character after all.

Stolen Years

Last week I received a note asking how Horror Among Thieves is going; it turns out that it's been a whole year since the Indiegogo campaign funded. That's a bit embarrassing, as I'd intended to have it completed by Christmas and it's clear that I am not ready for even semi-professional publishing.

The good news is that I handed in the text of the adventure to James in May, along with almost all of the maps and art; I have a couple of final images to draw and I'm working on those now. We want to include some bonus adventures as a gift to those who helped fund the adventure and who have been waiting for so long; the adventures are written but I'm not happy with the format, so they'll need a bit of revision. It may be that the adventure is released without them and they get sent out as backer exclusive pdfs later.

Oh, and after going back and forth on the cover image James and I decided to go back to the original idea and as a result we've changed the title of the adventure to Forgive Us. I do love a good pun but the new title does fit a bit better and is more LotFPey.

I'm sorry that Forgive Us has taken so long. It is on its way and I hope it will be worth the wait.

Masters of the 13th Age

Over at the Tower of Zenopus I left the following comment:

The other major thing you'd have to tweak for your own setting is the Icons. The good thing is that although the game makes heavy use of the Icons, they are themselves referred to in generic terms; the game refers to the "Lich King" but this could be Vecna, Azalin, Nagash, Sauron or Skeletor. It needn't even be a lich king if you didn't want it to be; there's an article on Rob Heinsoo's blog about using 13th Age to run a Shadowrun game and using corporations in place of Icons.

Now I have this bonkers idea -- bonkers because there's no way my group would play it -- to run a Masters of the Universe campaign using 13th Age. There are a couple of approaches one can take with adapting a setting to 13th Age and its Icons; in some cases a straight swap might be possible, but I don't think there's any harm in coming up with new roles if the standard ones don't fit without becoming meaningless.

Skeletor is an easy one, because of course he's the Lich King, a fallen skull-faced wizard desperate to discover the Sorceress' secrets and conquer Eternia. He is allied with or opposed to Hordak depending on the day of the week and has a mysterious connection to the Eternian Royal Family.

The Sorceress is a magician allied with the Royal Family, but is also somewhat aloof and has her own agenda. She could be a straight swap for the Archmage or the Priestess, but I'd probably lean towards the Archmage to make her a bit more unpredictable.

Hordak is a cyborg skeletal pig man with an army of robots and a bat fetish, so isn't a neat fit with any of the existing 13th Age Icons and I'd probably create a new role for him, opposed to the Royal Family and allied -- sometimes -- with Skeletor. He's also stuck on another planet most of the time, and that's an interesting contrast with the more active Icons.

The Eternian Royal Family fit well in the Emperor role, standing for civilisation and order in a chaotic world. As such, King Randor and Queen Marlena have much in common with the Sorceress as they all strive to keep the world safe. As an extra complication, the Queen knows that her son is also the Sorceress' champion He-Man, but Randor does not, because he's a Dad and Dads are rubbish at knowing what's going on with their kids.

King Hiss would seem to be a good fit for the Orc Lord role, an ancient force of chaos and destruction returned to the world and seeking to overturn civilisation. He works with Skeletor or Hordak in rare circumstances but the alliances soon break due to mutual distrust. Although Hiss does not know the Sorceress, her magic is the same as that which banished him aeons ago so he considers her an enemy.

Zodac is another who doesn't fit in with the standard 13th Age Icons as he's concerned with balance and neutrality. The closest 13th Age gets to that is the High Druid, but she's all woodcraft and lentils and Zodac's more ray guns and floating chairs and ripping off Jack Kirby. Neutral alignments can be a bit naff in D&D but I think that the way 13th Age makes alignment more a matter of association with actual personalities gives neutrality more potential; it's difficult to play a character who strives to maintain a balance between abstract moral concepts but it's easier when those concepts are embodied in other characters with their own personalities and goals. So Zodac is in, as an observer and secretive manipulator of the other Icons.

There's one notable omission up there. I've left out He-Man because while he is somewhat iconic -- what with his name being in the title of the cartoon and everything -- he doesn't seem to be much of an independent operator with his own goals; rather he serves either the Sorceress or the Royal Family, or both. I suppose one could create a role for him but it doesn't seem in keeping for Icons to be subservient to each other and as much as he is the most powerful man in the universe, he is also a bit of a lackey. Also, with He-Man off stage it means that there is more for the players to do.

I've also stopped at six Icons, in part because the setting is not quite rich enough to support the full thirteen, but also because I suspect 13th Age's Icon system is flexible enough to work with a lesser number and all this nostalgic waffling is -- in a way -- supposed to be a proof of concept.

Now all I need is for someone to play it.

You've Been Framed

There have been plenty of computer games based on comics properties over the years but not too many that have emulated the comics medium itself. 1988's Batman: The Caped Crusader is one notable exception:


Sega's Comix Zone for the Mega Drive is a more sophisticated version of what Batman was getting at:


Perhaps we were waiting for the right technology to come along; 2013 will see the release of Framed from Loveshack Entertainment. What's most interesting to me about Framed is that unlike the earlier games, the medium of comics isn't only a stylistic element but is fundamental to the core game mechanics:


From the look of it, Framed seems to be a sort of action-puzzle hybrid in a similar vein to the original Lemmings titles, but the parameters of the game are not yet clear; there's no time limit shown in the concept video, nor is there any indication of whether the player can only work with what's there at the start or if they can bring in new panels. It may turn out that Framed is going to be a stylish but casual amusement rather than a true brain-busting puzzler but even if that turns out to be the case, as a fan of comics and computer games I applaud the concept and I'm keen to see more as the game develops.

Beautiful Destruction

I have been excited about seeing Pacific Rim since it was first announced, and after what has seemed like an endless wait I saw it yesterday.

The short review is that I loved it and it lived up to almost all of my high and unreasonable expectations. It is probably going to bomb at the box office and that's an injustice so I recommend that you go and see it.

It's not a perfect film -- this is the longer review now, by the way -- but my quibbles were few. The lead actors are a bit flat; they often are in action films but in Pacific Rim it's exacerbated by a bunch of supporting actors who have far more charisma. It's no accident that they put Idris Elba in the trailers.

I was also a bit disappointed that the climax of the film is almost identical to that of one of the biggest titles of last year. Pacific Rim has been in production for so long that the similarity was perhaps unavoidable, and it's not a bad climax, but it is a bit of a shame as the comparisons probably won't be in the newer film's favour.

That's it for the things I didn't like, and one of them isn't really a problem with the film itself.

Pacific Rim's greatest strength -- and alas, I think the source of most of the complaints from other reviewers -- is that it is not pretentious. The trailers promised giant robots punching giant monsters and that's just what the film delivers. It would be easy to get this wrong -- the recent Transformers films are an excellent example -- but Guillermo Del Toro and his team work hard to make this the best robots-punching-monsters film they can.

The characters are simple, yes, but they are believable, as a result of good use of archetypes. The awkward English scientist, the brash Australian, and the dour Russians are all action movie clichés but that's all they need to be to make the story work. You could add a bunch of wrinkles to them but they'd be just as unnecessary as they would have been in Aliens and if you're going to argue that Aliens is a bad action film then you're some kind of dangerous lunatic.

That said, a good action movie gets away with thin characterisation because the action sequences carry the film and that's true of Pacific Rim. Del Toro has always had a good eye for a combat sequence -- Blade II may have had its problems but the fights were spectacular -- and he brings that approach to the all important monster-punching bits, with excellent choreography and pacing; every fight has a twist or revelation that gives it a bit of a kick and transforms -- pun intended -- the battle. There were a handful of moments where I wanted to cheer at the audacity of what was happening on screen.

Also important is a sense of scale, something that both Cloverfield and the American Godzilla fumbled and Pacific Rim gets spot on. I have heard that the 3D version mucks this up, in effect growing the viewer to the size of the monsters and robots and robbing the film of some of its more striking visuals. I saw it in the more sensible format -- as Del Toro intended -- and it was gorgeous; the Hong Kong sequence is a particular highlight, all neon and lashing rain and titans battling in the middle of it all. There's an odd sort of elegance to the film, a sense of beautiful destruction.

The design work is excellent. The artists have taken a simple approach, resulting in clear, almost iconic shapes; each monster and robot has a clean and distinctive silhouette and I could draw a reasonable likeness of the larger members of the Pacific Rim cast from memory right now but I'd struggle to do the same with the spiky jumbles of the Transformers films, and those are characters I've been following for decades. I suppose one positive aspect of the film's potential failure is that the action figures will soon be heading for the clearance shelves and I can pick them all up for half price.

There have been some indifferent and even negative reviews of the film but I think those reviewers are perhaps looking for too much. Right from the start Pacific Rim set out what it was going to be about and more than lives up to that initial promise. It's a very honest film and I don't think it's been given enough credit for that honesty. Of course it's okay to want more from one's entertainment -- I have often been a critic of products that play it safe and in its own way the film does push boundaries, at least in the sense that no one in the West has made a film like it before -- but there's also something to be said for unpretentious quality and Pacific Rim has heaps of that. You might pooh-pooh the broad idea of a giant monster movie but you can't say that Pacific Rim isn't an excellent example of the genre.

Also, Kanye West liked it and if that's not a recommendation, I don't know what is.

(2022: Crikey, the Kanye West thing didn't age well, did it? I still like Pacific Rim, whatever the racist says.)